“I’m here! It’s me! I’m not late, am I? Please don’t end the meeting! Open the door! Please! Please!”
Just as Sarah was entertaining some improper thoughts, someone began pounding furiously on Enoch’s door. Startled out of her wits, she clutched her pounding heart and flung the door open.
“Who is it?!”
But there was no one beyond the doorway.
Sarah’s searching gaze caught a faint movement and drifted downward.
A man was doubled over, gasping for breath as though he had sprinted all the way there, looking ready to collapse at any moment.
“…….”
As Sarah stared at his heaving back, her lips slowly parted. For a moment, she wondered whether she was hallucinating from wanting something too desperately.
“Hah, hah… Ah, thank goodness. The meeting… phew… it hasn’t ended yet, has it?”
While Sarah stood frozen in shock, the man finally caught his breath and raised his head.
His long black hair swayed with the movement. His face, slick with sweat, remained deathly pale. Despite running hard enough that there should have been some color in his cheeks, he somehow looked even more corpse-like than he had the day before.
“…No.”
Mesmerized, Sarah gazed up at the face she had dreamed of even in her sleep and shook her head.
In Enoch’s house, now deserted by everyone else, the person who had come knocking was, incredibly—
“Not at all. You’re right on time.”
—Leniss, the man Sarah had been so desperate to find.
Oh my God. How is this happening?
Astonished that her wish had come true without her having to lift a finger, Sarah covered her mouth with both hands in wonder.
Is God actually helping me? I never thought I’d live to see the day…
“Please, come in!”
Overcome with emotion, she welcomed him wholeheartedly.
“Thank you so much for gracing this humble place with your presence!”
Throwing the door wide open, she eagerly ushered Leniss inside.
“Ah, yes.”
Leniss hesitated at her excessive enthusiasm, but fortunately, he didn’t run away.
“The house is a little messy, but you don’t mind, do you? It was practically an empty wreck to begin with anyway.”
Sarah casually kicked some debris aside, subtly disparaging Enoch’s house as she grinned. Leniss made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sob and returned an awkward smile.
“Th-thank you….”
He shuffled into the house with the awkwardness of someone who had never been warmly welcomed anywhere in his life. Despite having spoken with her before, he didn’t seem to recognize Sarah from their encounter in the square.
Well, that makes sense. I was covered from head to toe by a cloak back then.
Following her into the empty parlor, Leniss stopped short and looked around in confusion.
“Where is everyone?”
“They all left! They fought like dogs!”
Unable to contain her excitement, Sarah proudly confessed her lie.
“What?! They couldn’t hold a meeting for an entire year because they kept fighting, and now they’ve ruined another one?!”
Leniss looked utterly horrified.
“Of course. We’re all doomed….”
And in the very next moment, he slumped as though every last trace of hope had drained out of him.
“But the table… Why…?”
As he wallowed in despair, Leniss finally noticed the wrecked parlor and belatedly stared at it in surprise.
“Gideon smashed it because he was angry with me.”
“And the clocks?”
“The captain knocked those down because he got angry about that.”
“I see.”
Even from Sarah’s fragmented explanation, Leniss immediately grasped the calamity that had swept through the room.
“So another fight broke out today. They fought again….”
Clearly, this was not good news. Leniss clutched his head, his expression pained.
“Yes, that’s what happened. Would you like a chair…?”
Sensing that Leniss might leave at any moment, Sarah dragged over the chair by the window and offered him a seat.
“At this rate, we’ll never manage to hold a proper meeting….”
But Leniss seemed not to hear her, too consumed by despair. He dragged his hands down his face, his worried blue eyes sweeping over the devastated meeting room.
“Haaah—.”
He released a deep sigh, as though the weight of the entire world rested on his shoulders.
Sarah nodded sympathetically. If she were in Leniss’s position, she would probably sigh like that too, forced to work with people who constantly fought and destroyed things.
Tsk, tsk. No wonder your fate keeps getting tangled up.
Unable to suppress the sharp thought that crossed her mind, Sarah gave Leniss a consoling pat on the back.
“These brutes who only know how to use force.”
“These brutes who only know how to use force.”
As if rehearsed, their voices overlapped perfectly.
“……!”
“……!”
Their wide eyes—one pair blue, the other brown—met.
What were the chances of an idle thought aligning so perfectly with someone else’s?
You too?
Yeah. Me too.
A profound sense of mutual understanding passed between them.
“…For now, since you came to see Master, I’ll take you to him.”
“…Thank you.”
After sharing that unspoken moment of solidarity, the two slipped naturally into their next exchange. Perhaps because of that brief connection, Leniss seemed more comfortable accepting Sarah’s kindness.
“By the way, who are you?”
…Or so it seemed, until—
As Leniss placed his foot on the first stair to follow Sarah upstairs, he suddenly remembered to ask who she was.
It was an extraordinarily belated question—and the one Sarah least wanted to answer.
“I’m your master’s slave.”
Sarah’s smile vanished instantly as she blurted out the introduction without even pausing for breath.
“Let’s go.”
With some effort, she restored her smile and briskly urged him onward. Yet she kept a close eye on Leniss, troubled by the fact that the Star’s Fragment had remained silent ever since their reunion.
When she had saved Seiyen, the Fragment had wailed incessantly from the moment they met until his rescue was complete, exhausting her.
What’s the difference between the two?
As Sarah mulled over various theories, unable to make sense of the Fragment’s fickle behavior—
“Ah, by the way, do you know where the report I sent to the captain is?”
Leniss, following behind her up the stairs, broke the silence first. A faint note of hope crept into his sunken voice.
“Pardon? A report?”
Sarah had never once seen Enoch read anything in this house and was about to say she hadn’t even laid eyes on such a thing—
“Ah, yes. The report….”
Yesterday morning.
She suddenly remembered the stack of documents she had enthusiastically burned for warmth, and her voice trailed off.
Oh, damn it. That was Leniss’s report?
Frowning uneasily, Sarah decided to feign ignorance.
“Well, by the time I arrived, it was already….”
Sarah shook her head as if to say it had already been too late, and Leniss interpreted the gesture in the most tragic way possible.
“Of course. He must have tossed it somewhere again….”
His shoulders slumped as the last of his hope disappeared. His pale lips moved rapidly, and for a moment Sarah thought she heard something along the lines of, “That damn lecher who only cares about women.”
She tactfully pretended not to hear.
“Oh, and please don’t tell the Captain I came. Just say a beautiful woman came to see him.”
As they continued upstairs, Leniss suddenly made the unexpected request, as though it had only just occurred to him.
“Why? Are you two on bad terms?”
“No, it’s more like….”
Scratching his head, he leaned closer and whispered in a voice barely louder than an ant’s.
“The Captain won’t grant anyone a private audience unless it’s a woman.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sometimes, when his depression gets bad, he won’t even see women.”
“Excuse me?”
“So, um… forgive me for asking, but did you… with the Captain yesterday?”
“…….”
Even without a verb, she knew exactly what he meant, so she didn’t bother asking “Excuse me?” a third time.
It was an outrageously invasive question for a first meeting, leaving Sarah speechless and completely unsure how to respond.
Unable to see her own reflection, Sarah had no idea how grave her expression had become. Seeing her face stiffen, Leniss hurried to explain himself.
“It’s not that I actually want to know about someone else’s bedroom affairs. It’s just that if the Captain doesn’t… you know… even for one day, he gets depressed. And then he becomes really irritable….”
“Haha!”
That genuinely made Sarah laugh.
“He really is unbelievable.”
A mocking laugh, naturally.
And the target of her ridicule was, of course, Enoch Soser.
“Huh…?!”
Unaware of this, Leniss flinched, apparently wondering whether she had been talking about him. Rather than explain herself, Sarah chose to answer the question she had initially ignored.
“Unfortunately, my master is going to be irritable today.”
“Huh? Why? That must have been a difficult decision….”
Despite claiming to have no interest in other people’s bedroom affairs, Leniss seemed remarkably curious about why Sarah and Enoch hadn’t slept together.
“Why? Well, my master is….”
Sarah answered without hesitation, as though responding to the simplest question in the world.
“Unlucky, of course.”
And vain, promiscuous, lewd, and downright grotesque.
But she decided it would be best not to say all of that aloud. Having finished the thought, Sarah gave a faint smile, as though that single word summed him up perfectly.
“…….”
Maybe I was too honest.
Leniss offered no response to Sarah’s audacious assessment of the “great” Captain as unlucky.
Ah… this won’t do. I need to get closer to him if I want to shorten my sentence.
The regret came too late. The words were already out and could not be taken back.
“Heh—.”
At that moment, Leniss gave another strange laugh, just as he had earlier. It still sounded eerie, but this time he also looked genuinely delighted.
Smiling like a conspirator plotting treason, he suddenly began fidgeting bashfully. Tucking his hair behind both ears, he asked with laughter in his voice,
“Why exactly did Gideon get angry with you?”
“Um, probably because I’m an immune…?”
“…!”
It should have been obvious to anyone with eyes, yet Leniss reacted as though he had only just realized Sarah was an immune.
He instinctively retreated several steps, then immediately closed the distance again and peered intently into Sarah’s eyes.
“Oh, you really are?”
She had noticed it before, but this man truly had no eye for detail whatsoever.
“Yes, I am.”
Sarah nodded reluctantly. She had assumed he was merely pretending not to know, but apparently he genuinely hadn’t noticed.
Somehow, she had ended up volunteering the fact that she was an immune.
This is bad. I should’ve just made something up.
People around here seem to despise immunes.
Feeling as though she had just ruined a perfectly good situation, Sarah clicked her tongue in regret.
“That’s truly a relief.”